Financial News Features

Fortunately, more people are tuning in to their finances and thinking more strategically about reaching their goals. According to the Debt.com 2021 Budgeting Survey, 80% of Americans say they have a budget—which is an improvement from just 68% two years ago.

If you can go to a restaurant, you can come to work. That’s been my mantra as the pandemic thankfully fades and booster shots start arriving. Remote work has its place and has shortcomings.

If you can afford to, divert some of your money into a “play” account that can keep you entertained while the rest of your money does the boring work of growing, says Howard Dvorkin, a certified public accountant and chairman of Debt.com. “Once you put the bulk of your portfolio into diversified funds, you can take a small percentage of your money to play around with individual names.”

At the height of the pandemic last year, Debt.com polled more than 1,000 Americans and learned that 46 percent had medical debt. More than half of those were in collections.

Howard Dvorkin, CPA and Chairman on Debt.com, tells GOBankingRates that when rewards cards first became popular in the late 80s and early 90s, many had annual fees. While many might have hated them, they didn’t complain much – because there was nothing that could be done about it.

The Sun-Sentinel reported, “Roughly 1 in 7 U.S. residents with a credit record has medical debt in collections.” That sounds bad, but it’s actually worse. My own firm, Debt.com, recently conducted a poll showing half of all Americans owe medical bills. And half of those owe more than $1,000. Surprisingly, these results had little to do with COVID – because medical debt was a huge problem before the pandemic. Student loans have been in the news as an especially dangerous form of debt. Well, settle in for the sequel: medical debt.